noting that “this deity did not originate in Haiti.
His home is in Dahomey and is worshipped there
extensively. Moses had his rod of power, which was
a living serpent. So that in ever temple of
Damballa there is a living snake, or the symbol.”
Hurston locates the life and power of Moses
squarely within the African diaspora, noting
earnestly that “[w]herever the children of Africa
have been scattered by slavery, there is the accep-
tance of Moses as the fountain of mystic powers.”
Hurston’s Moses is a child of Ethiopian and
Assyrian parentage and, as such, is central to her
daring revisionist reading of the Bible and contem-
porary critique of American racism. As Hurston bi-
ographer Valerie Boyd notes, the writer’s focus on
this dimension of the biblical story calls attention
to the protagonist’s blackness. Hurston later uses
Moses’s decision to marry Zipporah, an Ethiopian
woman, to challenge further notions of racial pu-
rity and to tease out the documented but under-
played evidence of racism in the Bible. According
to Gloria Cronin, Hurston’s story of enslavement,
fugitive days, and emancipation was a vehicle
through which she could “uncover the fundamen-
tal patriarchal error at the very foundations of his-
torical Judeo-Christianity and provide a corrosive
parallel commentary on both Nazi Germany and
white America.” Her retelling would equate Amer-
ica with Egypt, suggests Cronin, and Hurston’s at-
tention to unyielding hierarchies would “critique
the gendered and racially ordered foundations of
Judeo-Christianity, German and the U.S.” (Cronin,
14). Biographer Robert Hemenway notes that the
significance of Moses, Man of the Mountainis inex-
tricably linked to the dominance of the Moses
story in African-American culture. He suggests
that “[t]o understand fully what Hurston at-
tempted in this novel, one must remember the
identification made by captive black slaves in
America with the children of Israel in Egypt, and
the resulting role that Moses played in Afro-
American folklore” (Hemenway, 258). Hurston’s
depictions of Moses’ evolution and increasing tran-
scendence all function as persuasive allegories of
African-American experiences in the passage from
enslavement to emancipation. The novel also re-
flects Hurston’s lifelong interest in folk culture.
She incorporates elements of hoodoo, or what she
describes as “sympathetic magic,” into her repre-
sentations of Moses, his family, and his emanci-
pated but restless community of former slaves.
Hurston dedicated the novel to Edwin Osgood
Grover, president of Rollins College and one of her
supporters. In an October 1939 letter to him, she
voiced her hopes that, unlike her, he would not be
disappointed by the book. “I don’t think that I
achieved all that I set out to do,” she wrote. “I
thought that in this book I would achieve my ideal,
but it seems that I have not reached it yet but I
shall keep trying as I know you want me to” (Ka-
plan, 422). The reviews of the novel recognized its
“racial vitality” and “dramatic intensity” but
tended to critique its narrative style. Reactions
from members of the Harlem Renaissance commu-
nity varied greatly. ALAINLOCKEdismissed it as
“caricature” and RALPHELLISONdeclared that it
did nothing to advance the African-American lit-
erary tradition. Yet, CARLVANVECHTENpraised
the work and recommended heartily that his friend
LANGSTONHUGHESseek it out. “I hope you will
look into Zora’s new book,” he wrote in November
1939, less than three weeks after it appeared. “It is
very good indeed,” he insisted (Kaplan, 155).
Moses, Man of the Mountainis a compelling
narrative, one informed by the belief about human
agency that she considered in DUSTTRACKS ON A
ROAD,her 1942 autobiography. Hurston was con-
vinced that human beings are responsible for their
own destiny, that all have been “given a mind and
will-power for that very purpose” (Hurston, 202).
In Moses, Man of the Mountainshe crafted a novel
that emphasized the ways in which a range of indi-
viduals could effect their own transcendence and
self-development in the public and private spheres.Bibliography
Boyd, Valerie. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora
Neale Hurston.New York: Scribner, 2003.
Cronin, Gloria L. “Introduction: Going to the Far Hori-
zon.” In Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston,
edited by Gloria Cronin. New York: G. K. Hall &
Co., 1998.
Hemenway, Robert. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biog-
raphy.Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road. 1942;
reprint, New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.
Kaplan, Carla. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters.New
York: Doubleday, 2002.Moses, Man of the Mountain 353